


look up and you'll see (just how much you mean to me)

by alovelylilt



Category: High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff, Pining, also this is mainly rini-centric like the other characters are just mentioned, but they're soulmates and everything is okay in the end!!! i promise!!, just wanted to try writing some real angst like heartbreak stuff, so there’s like v minor one-sided redky, this fic is kinda angsty bc nini wants ricky but he doesn't want her, u know everyone has to write a soulmate au eventually...... this is mine, wait actually somehow big red became a big part of this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:07:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23906641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alovelylilt/pseuds/alovelylilt
Summary: At six years old, she gets her first taste of love in the form of blue skies and sunshine, courtesy of her soulmate. At eighteen years old, she gets her first taste of heartbreak in the form of empty skies and guarded brown eyes, and those come courtesy of her soulmate, too.
Relationships: Ricky Bowen/Nini Salazar-Roberts
Comments: 37
Kudos: 139





	look up and you'll see (just how much you mean to me)

**Author's Note:**

> -listen i know doubles or nothing hasn't been updated in forever AND i have this huge enemies-to-friends-to-lovers hockey player/figure skater oneshot i've been fastidiously working on (i rly think it's going to be like over 15k words oops) BUT i literally could not resist the urge to write this. so i did  
> -also this is way longer than i thought it was going to be HELP why can't i ever write something short and condensed  
> -so, in this alternate universe, soul marks are different for everyone. the way that nini and ricky's work is that they each have a little sky hovering above their heads, and they can each manipulate each other's skies. their little skies are separate from the real sky up in the world, which still functions as normal. i promise it makes more sense when u read it lmao but ANYWAY the idea is taken from this [laundry list](https://r-evolve-art.tumblr.com/post/144380748003/master-list-of-soulmate-aus) of soulmate aus i looked up; the particular one i chose to adapt for this fic is: "Everyone has a different sky that is shared with their soulmate (except clouds/sun/moon stay in the same position for everybody, so weather is not affected). Everyone has the ability to draw on the sky, making splash of colours or little notes for only them and their soulmate to see." for my purposes, this soul mark is ricky and nini's; other people have different ones.  
> -also sometimes, if they concentrate really hard, they can hear each other's thoughts if the other person wills it. why? bc i said so. so we can only hope it makes sense in the context of the fic  
> -i am not filipina! i tried to google some things to add authenticity to the idea that nini grows up in the philipines, but there's only so much research you can do before it falls short of a lived experience, and i don't have that (i actually am asian-american, but not filipina) so please let me know if i made a mistake!! sorbetes are a type of filipino ice cream according to my google searches so yeah  
> -there are some inaccuracies with the timeline of nini's moms rotations as diplomats but ahem we will just ignore that  
> -also nyc pride is in june i think but for my purposes we will pretend it happens during the academic school year  
> -ooh also i listened to a lot of coldplay while writing this (there are for sure coldplay lyrics sprinkled in/alluded to in this fic) so if u wanna u can do that too for the vibes lmao  
>   
> enjoy :))

Soul marks show up in kindergarten; all the kids get the day off to be with their families, so that they can all learn about whatever new, fascinating addition has been made to the fabric of their lives. 

Nina wakes her moms at the crack of dawn and begs them to look at her and tell her if they’ve noticed any changes in her— she’s hoping for the same beautiful, looping cursive that spells out her moms’ names on each of their wrists, but she’ll take a timer, or a drawing, or some other text, or _anything_. She hasn’t noticed anything different about herself yet; no changes in any of her senses, no strange dreams, no voices in her head. So, it can’t be one of those. It has to be physical then, right? That’s what she asks her moms, who just chuckle and tell her to go back to bed. Her soul mark will appear at some point in the day, they promise. Nina huffs but obeys; tiny feet carry a tiny girl back to a bedroom painted with pink skies and fluffy white clouds.

Nina is 6 years old; bright, inquisitive, and adorable with brown hair up in pigtails and a toothy grin with a gap or two in it. She doesn’t know anything about love, or destiny, or fate, but she knows that her older cousin got his soul mark two years ago and Nina has been jealous ever since, especially since his soul mark resides in the colors of his eyes, which change to reflect the mood his soulmate is in. More than anything else, Nina knows that her moms love each other the most— after her, of course— and it’s thanks to their soul marks. If love means sorbetes that Mama C buys her on Sundays and Mama D’s kisses on the cheek every morning when she wakes her up for school, then Nina would very much like to have it. 

At some point in between morning cartoons and lunch, a curious, gauzy _thing_ appears above Nina’s head. Dana is the first one to notice; she claps a hand over her mouth in a silent gasp and shakes her wife’s shoulder, pointing to the thing floating above Nina’s head. It almost looks like a screen— square-shaped, semi-transparent, tinged with gray, and just about the width of Nina’s shoulders. 

“Nina, sweetie?” Carol sits down next to her daughter, who had been busy assigning different soul marks to her dolls.

“Yes, Mama C?”

Dana comes to sit down on Nina’s other side. Joyfully, she points upwards. “Look up, honey. You got your soul mark.”

Nina shrieks and snaps her head up so hard that Carol momentarily wonders about whiplash, but then her daughter’s excited babble about soul marks and _Mamas, what do you think it means?_ drowns out everything else.

Nina keeps her eyes trained above her head for the rest of the day, but nothing changes in the square above her head. Her hand passes cleanly through it when she tries to touch it, and she almost wants to complain about how boring this is, after the initial excitement of finally getting her soulmark. 

Right before bed, Nina gathers up all of her mental power (and physical— her little fists clench and her face screws up in utmost concentration) and yells in her head, as loud as she can, _MY NAME IS NINA!_ After that, she falls into her bed, exhausted and ready to just forget this whole soulmate business until the next business day. Just as her eyes are beginning to grow heavy, _MY NAME IS RICHARD!_ echoes through her head, and she bolts upright in bed, her gaze shooting straight up. There, in the square above her head, is a blue sky and a beaming yellow sun. Clouds dot the sky in strange shapes; Nina has to squint before she realizes that they’re _letters_. _HI NINI_ is written in the sky in the form of clouds; how did _that_ happen? Nina concentrates very hard and tries to imagine what the sky looks like for her right now: velvety dark and sprinkled with stars. She tries to move around the stars to form the letters, _HI RICHARD_ , but there aren’t enough stars in her mental image of the sky, and she ends up going with _HI RICKY_ and hopes that her soulmate is okay with the nickname. Perhaps he had even had a similar problem with shaping the clouds into words; after all, where else could “Nini” have come from?

Nina doesn’t get a wink of sleep the whole night. Her and Richard exchange tidbits about themselves as best as they can through the limited and unique medium of the skies above their heads; it isn’t efficient by any means, but she still learns that Richard lives in America and his best friend is someone named Big Red (Nina wonders if that’s another cloud-writing mistake). Richard says his parents have been fighting recently, but it’ll be okay because his dad promised to get him a skateboard and his mom said she’d get him all the protective gear so he could learn how to skate with Big Red. 

By the next morning, Nina is firmly resolved to go by Nini from now on; her moms just chuckle and agree, glancing between the lovely script on their wrists and the sky that floats above Nini’s head. It’ll be many more years before Nini will be able to truly understand what a soul mark signifies (a partner for life, a love more powerful than distance and time and space, a home in a person), but for now, they are happy to acquiesce to her desire to go by the name spelled out in the clouds above her head.

At school, a cacophony of six-year-old voices fills the air with talk of soul marks. Nini’s been making the rounds, informing everyone that she would like to go by Nini and not Nina now, so she doesn’t realize there’s a new student in her class until the curly-haired girl is hovering near her during lunch. New students are common at Nini’s school; her parents are U.S. diplomats stationed in the Philippines, and she goes to an international school in Manila with many of her parents’ friends’ kids. The nature of a global lifestyle like theirs is that new kids come and go with casual frequency. 

Nini’s not the most outgoing child of all time, but she has a heart that’s too big for her body, and it aches at the sight of the uncertain, scared look on the new girl’s face. So, she taps the new girl on the shoulder and offers her a wide smile.“Hi! I’m Nina, but I got my soul mark yesterday and Ricky— I mean, Richard— spelled it like Nini, so now I’m Nini! What’s your name?”

“Gina,” she says. When she smiles at Nini, the same exact gaps in her teeth appear. The two girls instantly bond over missing teeth in the same locations, and Gina _oohs_ and _ahhs_ appropriately over the sky above Nini’s head before showing her the lone lock of bright blonde hair tucked behind her ear. Gina explains that her mom told her it was probably the color of her soulmate’s hair, which is not nearly specific enough for what Gina wants.

“Does that mean you’ll have to dye your hair crazy colors until you meet your soulmate?” Nini asks, her eyes wide in wonder.

Gina bemoans the thought. “I don’t _want_ to!”

Nini just laughs and loops an arm around her new friend’s shoulder, assuring her that she’d look good in any hair color.

* * *

Over time, Nini and Ricky (he assured her that he liked that name better) get better at manipulating the skies above their heads. They’re limited by the size of their own personal skies (it always stays the width of Nini’s shoulders, no matter how much her aunts and uncles tell her she’s grown), but they’ve gotten adept enough at plucking stars and clouds and other celestial features out of the sky and arranging them to their heart’s content to carry on full conversations. They can even change each other’s skies to whatever they want now, no longer limited by what the actual sky where they are looks like at any point in time.

In the fourth grade, Gina’s mom is transferred back to headquarters in D.C., and Nini cries the whole day after Gina’s flight leaves. The sky— the real one, the huge one— cries with her; dark storm clouds gather in swirling masses before emptying their contents downwards. Sheets of rain pour down from above, but Nini’s head remains dry; Ricky has conjured up blue skies and sunshine for her today, both to cheer her up and to keep her dry from the storm. 

Nini’s moms let her get a phone and social media when she enters middle school. One of the first things she does is look up Ricky Bowen, even though she knows it’s futile. Soul marks are a funny thing— you can’t see what your soulmate looks like before you meet them in person. She can stare at Ricky’s Instagram profile for as long as she likes (bio: do u even sk8 bro), but she’ll only ever be able to make out a blurry outline of a boy. It’s not like she cares that much what he looks like, because she knows so much more about him than the color of his eyes or the texture of his hair. She knows that his favorite color is red, he hates asparagus, his parents are still fighting, he’s learning a new trick on the halfpipe with Big Red this weekend, he’s scared of lightning, he still sleeps with the Build-A-Bear his parents got him when he was eight, he’s trying to build up a collection of Vans, and so many more details that she’s collected over the years, written in the sky. But still, it’d be nice to put a face to the boy who is more than her best friend— he’s her soulmate, her ending and her beginning, her _person_ who is hers and only hers until the world ceases to exist. 

Seventh grade is when everything changes. First, Nini’s moms get transferred to Singapore, but they let her enroll in the boarding program at her school and stay in the Philippines; they want her to have stability in her adolescent years, and they’re just a short plane ride away. Nini misses them terribly, but she sees them as often as possible through flights and FaceTimes and holiday visits. Then, Kourtney arrives at Nini’s school. They become best friends in a flash, and as the rest of the year progresses, Nini remains eternally grateful to have Kourtney by her side during all the tumultuous letdowns.

Ricky’s parents’ fighting reaches its upper limit; he’s miserable and confused and scared and angry. Nini’s heart breaks for her soft, sweet boy. She can’t do much for him besides look up and read what he puts in the sky for her, but he’s becoming more and more closed off as the days go on. Nonetheless, she makes sure to send him the bluest skies and the cheeriest sunshine that she can imagine, every single day, without fail. She only wants warmth and brightness to touch him for as long as he lives, and she feels lucky that she can give that to him, if nothing else.

Still, artificial light can only keep something alive for so long. Ricky’s messages in the sky come with less and less frequency, even as Nini’s own messages become more concerned and urgent. Eventually, the messages just… stop. One day, the sky above her head— the one that she’s grown so accustomed to, the one that offers her varying weather phenomena, encouragements, jokes, and precious details about the boy with the matching sky above his head— simply goes blank. Instead of clouds or stars or sunsets, there’s just… nothing. A vague tint of gray; that’s it.

Nini panics and tries everything she can to get the sky back. She remembers that time in kindergarten, the day she’d gotten her soul mark, when the same blank gray space that now hovers above her head had appeared. She remembers how she’d yelled as loud and as hard as she could in her head to get to Ricky, and she tries it again, every night before she goes to bed. But it’s exhausting and unfruitful, and eventually she stops trying. 

Life goes on. At first, Ricky’s absence is the only thing she ever thinks of. She runs through the gamut of emotions: anger, confusion, sadness, distress, and then, finally, resignation. And then there’s eighth grade, and high school, and semi-formal dances and volleyball practices. Ricky’s absence is always a dull ache that resides somewhere near the top of her head, but it’s so unobtrusive in its constancy that it becomes just another part of Nini’s world. She never forgets about the boy, but there are so many other people out there to discover.

Dating is strange in the world of soul marks. People still do it, even if they know they’re not with their soulmate at the moment. Pre-soulmate relationships always feel somewhat amorphous and ephemeral, but they’re fun and light and make people happy. Nini figures that she doesn’t need to deny herself that happiness, so she goes on dates here and there. Marie, Isaac, Rosie, Hudson, Alex… they’re all nice, but it’s understood that this is all just for fun. 

At Nini’s high school graduation ceremony, she tosses her cap into the air and— not for the first time— feels a sharp longing in her chest as her eyes catch on the smaller, personal sky hovering above her head. It’s semi-transparent and tinged with gray, the same way it has been for years, but she had nurtured some small, foolish hope that fireworks would shoot across it today in celebration of her graduation. She still conjures up blue skies and sunshine for Ricky every day, out of habit, but she’s long since given up on leaving him messages or yelling for him in her head; she knows she isn’t going to get a response. Over the years, she’s felt bitter and infuriated about the way he just _left_ her, without even a word of explanation, but today she just feels content. She hopes that he’s okay wherever he is; she hopes his graduation day was as joyful and exciting as hers; she hopes he’ll have a good college experience. 

In her heart of hearts, Nini hopes that she’ll get to meet him one day. She’s 18 and she’s going to Juilliard next year; she feels like she’s on top of the world, and she still believes in love. She thinks that if she ever meets Ricky, she’ll want to hear an explanation from him for why he left all those years ago, but even before that, she’ll want to create stars in the sky above his head and see her imagination come to life. She’ll want him to give her sunshine and blue skies, just like that very first night. And then, she thinks she’ll fall in love with him— really, truly, deeply, wholeheartedly.

If she ever meets him. 

* * *

“Ever” comes sooner than she’s ready. “Ever” comes on a Sunday in New York City; it’s move-in day for half the colleges in the area, and Nini meets Ricky at three minutes past midnight, when she’s heading down the hallway of her dorm to take a shower. 

She’s never known what he looks like, but the instant she sees the sky that hovers above his head of curls, she knows. It’s him. 

The shower caddy that she’d been holding by her side drops onto the floor with a loud clatter, making Ricky’s head snap up from where he’d been leaning against someone’s door, texting on his phone. 

His eyes meet hers first, and then he sees the sky that hovers above her head, and he knows. It’s her. His phone drops from his hand, too.

There’s a moment of silence that stretches on between them, as wide as the ocean and just as deep. Then, they’re both scrambling to pick up their belongings and to get to each other. 

Nini imagines a sky full of stars and gasps when it really appears over his head, like magic. Tears prick at the corner of her eyes as the dull ache that had signified Ricky’s absence for so many years disappears, replaced by the thrumming of her heart: _it’s him, it’s him, it’s him_.

“Ricky?” Her voice breaks on the word.

“Ricky!” The door behind Ricky opens, and a girl appears at his shoulder. “You’re here!”

Ricky stumbles over his feet as he twists around to face the girl, his hand running urgently through his curls. “Hey, Cassie, I-I’m sorry, can you just— just give me a couple minutes, please, I’m so sorry, I’ll explain later.”

Nini’s field of vision has narrowed to just Ricky and the beautiful sky above his head; she barely registers the girl behind him. Her heart pounds in her ears, and when he comes closer to her— close enough to touch— her nose fills with the sandalwood scent of his cologne. Electricity runs through her veins when he briefly touches the small of her back to usher her into the bathroom. Is this what everyone feels like when they meet their soulmate for the first time? Every single part of her is hyper aware of him; her senses are tuned in on him with dizzying intensity. 

She blurts out, “Why are we in the bathroom?” Mentally, she berates herself for starting with that. Bathroom talk doesn’t have a vibrant history of romance, after all.

“It’s the closest private space I could think of,” he says simply. 

She sucks in a breath at the sound of his voice, directed at her for the first time. It feels so good and so right to see him in front of her; _it’s him, it’s him, it’s him_. Underneath that mantra, a quieter but more intense repetition of words drums against her ribcage: _mine, mine, mine_. It’s not possessive so much as it is an unassailable truth: this is her soulmate, her ending and her beginning, her _person_ who is hers and only hers until the world ceases to exist. And he’s here, and he’s real, and he’s got stars above his head— stars that she put in the sky for him.

“We could’ve gone to my room,” she says finally, remembering that she has to actually speak to him instead of just staring.

He shakes his head quickly. “No, I don’t think that would be appropriate.”

She laughs a little at the quaint politeness of his tone. “Ricky, I’m your soulmate. I’m yours and you’re mine for the rest of our lives. I think it’s okay if you enter my room.”

He shakes his head more vehemently, his curls flying out of place. “ _No_ , Nini, no. I’m not. You’re not. We’re not.”

“Not what?”

“Soulmates! We’re not soulmates!”

Nini tilts her head to the side as confusion washes through her. “What on earth are you talking about? Of course we’re soulmates! I… Just look up!” She gestures to the stars above his head; quickly, she rearranges them to spell out _Hi, it’s Nini!_ , which feels a little stupid, but she doesn’t know how else to convince him that it’s her, his soulmate.

Ricky’s hands tremble violently as he shoves them through his hair again and again. “Stop, Nini, please, just… stop. I don’t _want_ to be your soulmate, okay? I have a girlfriend, Cassie. She lives in this hallway. I— god, this is such a mess. You— You aren’t supposed to be here. I didn’t think I’d ever actually meet you.”

Nini feels like her brain is running at half speed as she desperately tries to comprehend the meaning of his words. Is it possible that he isn’t experiencing the same wonderful, vivid explosion of longing, relief, desire, attraction, and what feels like the beginning of love? 

“Can we not do this?” Ricky gestures to the sky above his head. “I’ve left you alone for years now, but you still give me blue skies and sunshine every day. It’s hard enough to brush off the stares from people who see that my girlfriend and I don’t have matching soulmarks, but it’s worse when there’s a bright fucking sun above my head on a rainy day.”

Nini gapes at him for a long moment. When her brain finally catches up to what he’s saying, fury ignites her blood and iron straightens her spine. “Are you kidding me right now? You stopped communicating with me _years_ ago, you cut me off just like that, and I was scared and worried out of my goddamn _mind_ for you! I thought, well, maybe there’s something bad going on in his life that he hasn’t told me about. Maybe he can’t tell me. Whatever it is, I’m going to try and support him in the only way I know how. I’ll give him blue skies and sunshine, because that’s what he gave me the first time we connected, and I hope it’ll at least make him feel better to know that his soulmate is thinking of him and wants him to feel warm and happy whenever he looks up. And you’re telling me you thought it was a fucking _nuisance_ all these years? Because you’d get sent weird looks towards you and your _girlfriend_?” Nini’s chest is heaving by the end of her tirade; the word _girlfriend_ tastes bitter on her tongue, and she wants to throw her shampoo bottle at him.

Ricky looks stricken, his eyes glassy and his hands tugging with even stronger intensity through his hair. “I-I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Yeah? Then what _did_ you mean, Ricky?”

“I… I have a girlfriend.”

“I know! You said that already! But now… now you have me.” Nini’s voice trails off at the end. “It’s okay that you’ve dated other people; plenty of people do that before they meet their soulmates. I did, too. But now I’m here, and I’m yours! Don’t you want that?” _Don’t you want me?_ goes unspoken, even as Nini’s hands reach out of their own accord to stop his relentless mussing of his hair. She doesn’t miss the way he physically jerks at her touch, nor does she miss the way he instantly relaxes when she tenderly pats his hair back into place. She thinks she’ll start crying soon; it feels like the most natural thing in the world to touch him. It feels like everything has locked into place, like the universe has stopped expanding just so she could live in this moment where she’s touching her soulmate. Maybe she’s just been treading water for the past eighteen years, aimlessly keeping herself afloat only to end up here, in a college bathroom at half past midnight on a Sunday, her hands in Ricky Bowen’s hair and her heart in her throat.

Ricky’s eyes are closed when he speaks. “Nini, we can’t do this. I— Cassie… She makes me happy. And I’m with her. So if you could just leave me alone and let me be happy… I would really appreciate that.”

Something in the universe must crack at that point; somewhere, there must be a jagged split down the middle of a planet— maybe theirs, based on the way Nini feels her skin prick with a million different points of stinging pain. “Don’t I deserve to be happy?” she whispers, robotically retracting her hands from Ricky’s hair. “I’m your soulmate, Ricky. Your _soulmate_.” She keeps repeating the word, as if she can get him to look at her just by saying it enough times.

When he open his eyes, they’re filled with resentment and anger. “Of course you do, Nini, _of course_ you do! I still… I still care for you, you know. Of course I want you to be happy. But you wouldn’t be happy with me.” 

“Why not?” Her voice is desperate and hoarse with the beginning of a sob. 

“Because my parents got a divorce when I was in seventh grade, Nini! My parents were soulmates, too, and look how that ended up working out for them! They don’t speak to each other anymore. My dad had to go to AA meetings because he spiraled after the split. I haven’t heard from my mom in years. And they were _soulmates_. They were supposed to love each other forever. I don’t know, maybe what I feel for Cassie isn’t as deep as what I could feel for you, but god, if feeling deeply means hurting deeply, then I don’t want it.” _I don’t want you_ goes unspoken.

“That’s not fucking fair, Ricky. We haven’t even tried to be together yet! Who are you to play god and decide that we just won’t work out, huh? Who are you to take away my soulmate from me, just because you’re scared?”

Ricky sighs, his eyebrows cutting a deep furrow into his forehead and his eyes pained. “I’m sorry, Nini. I know it’s selfish of me to ask you to do this. But honestly, it might be for the best— you could find someone that you choose for yourself, Nini! Someone who you could make the decision to love, all for yourself. Don’t you think you could want that?”

“That’s bullshit, Ricky. Soulmates don’t guarantee love, and anyone who thinks so is just being naive about the realities of relationships. You don’t think my moms chose to love each other? You think their soul marks forced them together?” She scoffs, crossing her arms and turning away from him to let her tears fall into the sink. “No. We get our soul marks at age six, Ricky. And not everyone gets to communicate with theirs, but everyone knows that there’s someone out there for them, and only them. But that’s it, Ricky. It’s just someone who’s supposed be yours, and you’re supposed to be theirs. Soulmates still have to choose to be together, and to work on their relationships together, and sure, maybe they only do it because they know that they are each other’s designated person or whatever, but it’s still a choice. And I can’t explain what happened with your parents, but we’re not them, Ricky. We’re not. So please, please, let me choose you.”

“I’m sorry, I just— I can’t. I’m sorry.” Ricky turns to exit the bathroom, refusing to let Nini see the tears that are spilling down his own cheeks. 

“Wait! Please…” Nini’s voice is watery and resigned, which just makes the tears spring faster from Ricky’s eyes. “Before you go… tell me how you did it. Tell me how you erased the sky above my head all those years ago.” _Tell me how to stop caring for you_ goes unspoken.

“Think of nothing. Just… emptiness. A void. Absolute neutrality. And send that to me.” His voice is quiet and unreasonably gentle for the way he’s breaking her heart. “Bye, Nini.” 

And then he’s gone. The bathroom door swings shut with crushing finality behind him, and when Nini gets into the shower, she lets herself fully break down, saltwater tears mixing with scalding hot water. As she watches the remnants of her cherry blossom shampoo swirl down the drain, she thinks there must be pieces of her heart going down the drain, too, joining her used shampoo and all other unwanted things in the sewage.

* * *

Needless to say, Nini’s first day of college starts out awful. With her heart freshly cracked (she doesn’t want to say it’s _broken_ , because really, he’s just a boy and there are plenty of those, so it’s whatever… but no, he’s Ricky, he’s _her_ boy, and there’s only one of him) and her makeup haphazardly done, she walks into her first composition class of the day and almost breaks down again immediately.

It’s a small class filled with only composition majors, and of course, Ricky’s in it. The first thing she notices is the blank square above his head, and she feels a vicious twist of pride for herself at being able to erase his sky the same way he’d erased hers all those years ago, the same way he continues to keep hers blank. The next things she notices are the bags under his eyes and the sallow tint of his skin. Again, a vicious jolt of satisfaction runs through her; _good_ , he shouldn’t be able to walk away from her so easily. If he wants to do this— ignore each other for the rest of their lives, as if they weren’t goddamn _meant_ for each other— then he better feel the pain of it as strongly as she does.

Questioning stares get sent their way by the other students, and even their professor does a double take at the obvious tension between them (and the even more obvious matching soul marks floating above their heads). Nini studiously avoids everyone’s gaze as she takes the farthest seat away from Ricky. Maybe if she just keeps herself as far away from him as possible for the next four years, she’ll hurt less. 

However, fate is cruel, and the professor pairs them up for their final composition project. It’s half of her grade in this course, and Nini has never been one to let a boy (or a girl, or anyone else, for that matter) get in the way of her grades, even if the boy in question is her soulmate. 

So, she makes her way over to him at the end of class and shoves a pink sticky note in his face. “This is my number. Text me so we can work on the project. Let’s get it done as soon as possible.” She doesn’t let him speak before she whirls away and exits the classroom, her traitorous heart still racing at how close she had gotten to him.

By the middle of the day, Nini’s heart has mostly calmed down, though she still fears running into Ricky at every corner. At least she has dinner to look forward to; Kourtney attends Parsons across the city, and Nini had been overjoyed to find out that Gina is attending Juilliard’s dance program. The three of them have planned to have dinner today, although Gina and Kourtney have each texted about bringing additional people. 

When Nini reaches the cute little bistro they’d settled on for dinner, happiness fills her up for the first time since that initial lightning bolt of joy she’d felt upon seeing Ricky. Her friends are there, along with a couple new additions, and they all look excited and bubbling with stories to tell, the way people _should_ look on their first day of college. Not heartbroken and longing for a boy who doesn’t want them back.

“Nini! Oh, Nini, I’ve missed you so much!” Gina envelops her in a hug, and Nini feels a bit of her sadness draining away. 

As lunch goes on, Nini’s mood swings from wildly happy to wildly sad. She meets Gina’s soulmate, a beautiful girl with long blonde hair and emerald eyes, who Gina had met in D.C. during high school. Gina has also brought along Carlos, who’s in her dance program, and Carlos’s boyfriend, Seb, who’s studying musical theater at NYU Tisch. Kourtney announces that she’d bumped into her soulmate that morning at a smoothie shop in Greenwich Village, after which her color vision had been restored— just in time for her next four years in fashion design. Nini has always loved love, and she’s overjoyed to see so much of it around her. Still, the overwhelming evidence of her friends finding love in their soulmates inevitably reminds her of the undone nature of her own heart. 

Kourtney is nothing if not perceptive, so she draws Nini aside during dinner to ask her if anything’s wrong. That’s all it takes for Nini to crumple into sobs at the table. She’d be mortified by the way she’s acting in front of her new friends (while they’re seated outside at a public restaurant no less), but the memory of Ricky’s lovely, sad eyes, his tousled curls, the warm width of his hand on her back, and his sandalwood cologne overrides all her sensibilities. 

Everyone tries to console her as best they can, but an unwilling soulmate is uncharted territory for all of them. Gina and Kourtney tenderly gather up Nini and her belongings and usher her back to Kourtney’s dorm, where they spend the rest of the night watching absolutely mindless action movies with no hint of romance in them. It’s not enough— perhaps nothing will ever be enough to patch up the destruction that Ricky had wrought upon Nini’s heart in one fell swoop, one impossibly significant _Bye, Nini_ — but it’s still a great comfort, a soothing balm on a pain that feels ancient and everlasting.

Nini gives in to her curiosity at about 3am, surreptitiously scrolling through her phone even though she knows Kourtney and Gina fell asleep hours ago. The first account she pulls up is Ricky’s, and she scrolls all the way back to the beginning, to his first post of a skateboard. She feels absolutely pathetic, going through his Instagram feed like it’s a dirty secret or something, but the intense longing to see how he’d grown since he left her in seventh grade is too strong to ignore. Unwillingly, a gentle smile curves her lips as she watches as the boy who is meant to be hers develop from awkward, gangly limbs tripping over themselves (and his skateboard) into confident, strong shoulders and piano-player fingers. What she wouldn’t give to have been able to grow alongside him. What she wouldn’t give to be beside him right now.

The second account she pulls up is Cassie’s. She’s a ballet dancer at Juilliard, she moved to Ricky’s hometown in her senior year of high school, and her full name is Cassiopeia. That almost makes Nini break down into tears again, but between last night and this morning, there’s nothing left in her to cry. _Cassiopeia_. She’s named after a constellation, which is so fitting in such a tragically ironic way that it makes Nini laugh, humorless and a little hysterical. A constellation, like the stars that Nini used to arrange into messages for Ricky. It’s almost poetic, really— he didn’t want the stars she put up in the sky for him, hovering just above his head. He wants a distant constellation instead.

Eventually, the exhaustion from the heavy emotions Nini had been carrying around all day forces her eyelids closed. For a few blissfully ignorant hours, she forgets that she is untethered in this world: a solitary soulmate, an unwanted half of an unwilling pair (it’s far from the worst thing that could ever happen to a person, but god, it hurts as if it was).

* * *

Perhaps her heart is stronger than she thinks it is; perhaps _she_ is stronger than she thinks she is, because life… goes on. Life had gone on when Ricky abandoned her all those years ago, and life continues to go on now, irreverent and ignorant to the ugly ball of jealousy and longing that overwhelms Nini every time she sees Cassie and Ricky together. Sometimes she’ll pass by Cassie’s room on her way to the bathroom, and she can hear muffled laughter from shared inside jokes and tender nothings. Sometimes Cassie will show up at the end of Nini and Ricky’s composition class because Cassie had gotten out of rehearsal early and wanted to bring Ricky his favorite coffee. Nini would give up a great deal to know what makes Ricky laugh, what makes him blush, what kind of coffee he likes to drink; all the little details that she’s missed out on since seventh grade. She would give up a great deal for him, full stop… but not everything. She has to remind herself of this quite often: her world does not revolve around her soulmate, she had dreams and hopes and ambitions long before him and she’ll continue to have those long after him, and she can be her own soulmate if she wants. These sentiments are good and true, and Nini wants to be good and true, and strong, and independent, and unassailable, but she can’t be everything at once. She can only be who she is— ugly jealousy and longing and all. 

The worst part of it all is that Cassie is quite nice. Nini doesn’t know how much Ricky has told his girlfriend about the connection between them, but for however much Cassie knows, she doesn’t seem to hold a grudge. Gina has admitted that Cassie’s technical skills as a dancer are unmatched, and she never tries to steal the spotlight other than when it’s her turn. On all accounts, Cassie seems… fine, and perfectly untouchable to the ugliness that worms its way into Nini’s mind, critiquing Cassie’s outfit choices or the sound of her giggle or the annoying way she’s constantly touching Ricky.

They’re a month into the semester when Nini’s friends drag her out to a party hosted by some film major friend of Seb’s at Tisch; it’s a Halloween-themed party, even though Halloween is still some weeks away, and Nini dresses up in a sparkly red tube top and a red skirt and brings a fork from the dining hall in some vague approximation of a devil. Seb and Carlos dress up as “oh deer” and “holy cow”, and Gina and her soulmate dress up as Cher and Dionne from _Clueless_. Kourtney and her soulmate, Ashlyn, dress up as Cruella de Vil and Jessica Rabbit, and they blow everyone else’s costumes out of the water. EJ, Ashlyn’s cousin and a student at NYU Stern, tags along as well, dressed up as Superman. In another world, Nini might’ve looked EJ’s way more than once; in this world, she just accepts the drinks he brings to the pregame with a smile and a nod. 

Nini meets a few new people at the party, dances to a couple of Top 40s songs, and takes more than enough pictures. It’s all good and fun, until her eyes catch on Ricky’s curls and Cassie’s long braid. They’re dressed up as Katniss and Peeta, she thinks. Cassie says something into Ricky’s ear and he laughs, curling an arm around her shoulders and tangling his fingers through the end of her braid. Nini feels all the oxygen in her lungs leave at once, her chest excavated by the force of Ricky’s smile beaming down at Cassie’s upturned face. It shouldn’t surprise or hurt her this much after a month of seeing it, but she still feels like she’s floundering in the wake, drowning in an ocean of unrequited love.

A voice behind her inelegantly blurts out, “Hey, did it hurt when you fell from heaven?” 

“Excuse me?” Nini turns around, more shocked that someone would have the guts to start with such a shitty pickup line than anything else. A red-haired boy greets her, a sheepish look on his face.

“Y’know, because you’re dressed up as what could be a devil if I squinted? Not my best pun, but your costume doesn’t give me much to work off of.” He grins at her, teasing but friendly.

A surprised laugh erupts from Nini. “That line was so bad I feel like I shouldn’t laugh just based on principle, but you know what? I’m glad it made me laugh.”

He gives her a knowing look. “You’re Nini, aren’t you? I could tell by _that_.” He gestures to the gray square above her head.

Nini blinks, taken aback. “How’d you know?”

“I’m Big Red, Ricky’s best friend since we were kids. I remember you guys used to spend hours just talking over those messages in the sky.” He smiles fondly at the memory.

Nini ignores the automatic clench of her heart at the mention of Ricky. “Wow, it’s nice to finally meet you, Big Red.”

“You too, Nini. You enjoying the party?”

She wrinkles her nose. “It’s okay, I guess.”

“Ouch. This is my party, you know.” At her horrified look, he laughs and shoves her shoulder gently. “I’m just kidding, Nini. I mean, it really _is_ my party, but I won’t take it personally. You saw them, huh?” He jerks his head in Ricky and Cassie’s direction, completely unsubtly. Nini’s eyes widen as she meets Ricky’s gaze; it’s the first time she’s had direct contact with him since that night in the bathroom. In their class, they continue to sit as far away from each other as possible, and they haven’t had to work on their final project yet, so Nini’s been bereft of those warm brown eyes for a month. She thinks it’s more than a little unfair just how warm his eyes are; even when he’d been breaking her heart, there had never been anything approaching ice or cruelty in his eyes. Only awful sincerity and unjustified sadness— unjustified, because _he_ had been breaking _her_ heart, hadn’t he? And… wait a second, it looks like he’s approaching them—

“Oh my god, oh my god. Big Red, we need to leave, like, right now,” Nini babbles, grabbing Big Red’s wrist and hauling him away. “I cannot speak to him right now. Or possibly ever.”

Big Red raises an eyebrow but acquiesces to her insistent tugging. “Don’t you guys have to work on a project together or something?”

“I will cross that bridge when I get to it! Right now, I’m trying to escape the bridge that is on its way here!”

“And you had the audacity to call _my_ line bad? You really need to work on your analogies, Nini, what do you mean— oh.” Big Red finally spots his best friend, working his way across the living room towards them. “Oh, Nini. Come on, we can hide you in my room.”

Nini follows him numbly upstairs, her brain whirring at this strange turn of events. 

“You know, I thought I was in love with Ricky once,” Big Red remarks casually as they enter his room.

“What?” Nini gapes at him.

He laughs, gesturing for her to sit down. “Yeah, I was 15 and his initials matched the ones I had on my wrist. I mean, I knew I wasn’t _his_ soulmate, obviously, but I wondered if there could have been some glitch in the soulmate system— whatever system there is, if there even is one— and they just messed up or something. I _wanted_ to be in love with him, so, so badly, because, well…”

“Because he’s Ricky,” she finishes for him. She’s got a sad little smile on her face, and he offers her a similar one in return.

“Yeah, exactly. He’s just so easy to love, and yet, really fucking hard to love, too, because it hurts like hell to know you’re not the one he wants. I don’t know if I was ever _really_ in love with him— the way you’re supposed to be with your soulmate— so I can’t say that I know exactly how you feel, but trust me, I’ve been somewhere near where you are. And it sucks, so I’m sorry, Nini.” He reaches out a hand to pat her shoulder.

“Cassie’s really nice,” she says lamely. “And pretty, and talented, and… you know, other good things.”

“Wow, Nini, keep ‘em coming,” he responds dryly. Then, softly, “Nah, it’s okay. You’re right, Cassie’s really nice, but she’ll never be you.”

Nini scoffs at that. “What does that matter? He doesn’t want me. He’s made that very clear.”

“He’s not ready for you, Nini. I keep telling him that he probably won’t ever be ready for you, because you can’t really ever be ready for a person, especially not your soulmate. You can only come as you are, and hope that it’s enough.”

“Of course it’s enough! Any part of him would be enough for me. Any part.” She laughs, but there’s no mirth to it. “God, I’m pathetic. He won’t even look at me, and I’m still like this.” She heaves a breath. “Can you believe he told me that this was probably for the best? That I could go out and find someone for myself, someone who I could make a choice to love? And you know what, maybe I could! Maybe I will! But I’ll never get to make that choice about him.” She deflates. “I just… He never even gave me a chance. I know I don’t need him to go on with my life or whatever, but I never even got to decide that for myself.”

Big Red takes a big breath before turning to face her, his eyes serious and sad. “Look, I’m going to tell you some stuff that I probably shouldn’t, but I think it’s only fair that you know this. Ricky should’ve told you himself, and actually, I think he wanted to, but after he met you that first night… well, you kind of shell-shocked him.”

“He _completely_ shell-shocked me.”

“Yeah, fair enough. Anyways… Cassie came to our high school last year. She wanted a fresh start after her soulmate died, and Ricky’s dad had just died, too, from a relapse and an overdose. They understood each other at a time when no one else did, and they’ve been together ever since— oh, Nini.” Big Red scrambles to find Nini tissues; the girl is open-mouthed and silently sobbing.

“Sorry!” she gasps, swiping frantically at her face. “Sorry, sorry, this is _so_ not about me, I just… I feel even worse about how jealous and spiteful I’ve been about them. But I can’t— I can’t stop. I still feel it.”

He shrugs. “I think you’re allowed to be jealous and spiteful, Nini. He is your soulmate, after all.”

“Yeah, but aren’t I just horrible for being so selfish? They’ve gone through something I could never imagine, and I’m just sitting here, crying because a boy doesn't like me back. And I’m _still_ talking about myself.”

“Selfish or not, it’s what you feel, Nini. That’s okay. You’re allowed to feel whatever you feel,” he says gently. “Besides, you feel bad about being selfish, don’t you? That’s enough to tell me that you’re not horrible. You can feel whatever you feel, and if some of those feelings are not exactly the nicest? Well, as long as you acknowledge that, I think it’s okay. I think it’s enough. You don’t have to be good all the time, Nini.”

They sit in silence for a bit as Nini collects herself. Finally, she laughs— tired, but genuine. “I think I owe you my firstborn now or something. Like, the amount you’ve helped me tonight… seriously, Big Red. Thank you.”

He waves her off. “No need for that, Nini, I am definitely not ready to become a father yet.” Another pause, then, “But… if you’re offering to give me something, I’d just ask that you give Ricky a chance.”

She gives him a blank look. “A chance? A chance for what?”

“I’m his best friend. Even if it doesn't seem like it, he’s been deeply shaken ever since he met you a month ago, Nini. He’s got a lot running through his mind right now, and I’m just asking that if the time comes when he’s asking for it, give him a chance.”

Nini stares at him for a long moment. Then, she sighs and smiles reluctantly. “You’re too good for him, you know.”

He grins. “Yeah, I know. But you’ll do it?”

“Sure, it’s not like it’s a huge give for me or anything. You sure you don’t want to ask for anything better from me? Maybe, I dunno, something that could actually happen?”

“Nope, I’m good. Now, do you wanna come meet my actual soulmate? Believe it or not, life after Ricky does exist.”

She laughs and lets him pull her up. “I’d love to. What’s their name?”

“Red Big.”

“ _Really_?”

“Nah, his name is Riley. We came as Ron Stoppable and Kim Possible, actually. Three guesses as to which one I am…”

* * *

Nini looks at Ricky and Cassie differently after the party. She still feels a faint punch to the gut every time she sees them together, but it’s tempered by her curiosity over what exactly is going through Ricky’s head— what could he be thinking about that would make him ask her for a chance? She doesn’t want to doubt Big Red, but the idea is almost ludicrous. Ricky and Cassie look perfectly happy, as far as she can see. Granted, she doesn’t see much of them, but she’s thankful for that. Midterms have rolled around, and she’s buried up to her elbows in sheet music. 

Three weeks from Thanksgiving break, their composition professor advises them to get started on their final project. Nini grimaces and tries not to wait on bated breath for Ricky to text her about working on the project; when a few days have gone by and he hasn’t said a word to her, she snaps and storms up to him after class.

“Listen, I get that you don’t want to interact with me, like, _ever_ , but we have to work on this thing together, okay? I booked a practice room for tomorrow. Let’s just get it over with.” She slams another pink sticky note down on top of his laptop; the location of the practice room and the time she wants them to meet is printed neatly in her looping cursive, the i’s dotted with hearts the same she’d always done when she was younger, writing messages in the sky for him. 

Nini walks out and congratulates herself for the relative stability of her heartbeat; who knows, maybe she actually _is_ getting over him. Big Red’s voice echoes in her head: _Believe it or not, life after Ricky does exist._

Of course, she should’ve known that as soon as she got into an enclosed space with Ricky Bowen, everything else would go out the window. If pining after him had been enormously inconvenient and duly painful from afar, it’s absolutely devastating up close. Nini hadn’t thought far enough ahead to realize how she’d have to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with him at the piano bench, listening to beautiful Italian words roll gently off his tongue ( _sforzando_ , _andante_ , _staccato_ , _cadenza_ ) and inhaling his sandalwood scent. Every part of her that touches him burns upon contact; girl, on fire.

He’s got great ideas, too, which isn’t even the half of it; they work together as composers so well that it’s almost unfair to the rest of their class. This isn’t arrogance or pretension, but rather a simple truth. Nini sees it in the awe in their classmates’ eyes when it’s her and Ricky’s turn to present, sees it in the approving twinkle in their professor’s eyes. Some part of her longs to romanticize it all; after all, who would’ve thought that her and Ricky’s lives would run on such parallel lines all these years, putting them in the same school and the same damn class, working on the same composition? Maybe it’s the magic of soulmates (fate, destiny, kismet, whatever). Maybe they were always meant to collide like this, one way or another. 

And yet, they haven’t collided, not really. He’s close enough to touch, close enough to breathe in and to fall against, but not close enough to be hers. They spend hours in cramped practice rooms together, first penning out the broad strokes of a piano arrangement and then adding layers of orchestration on top. It’s stunning, the way their minds work together; sometimes she has a thought and he’ll complete it before she’s finished articulating it, or he’ll start on a motif and she’ll already be writing variations on it. Working together is the easiest thing in the world, which is great for their grade but terrible for Nini’s foolish, hopeful heart. Sometimes Nini lets herself believe that he really is looking at her a different way, or that his touch lingers longer than is polite, or that she hears his quick intake of breath when she leans into his space to fix a misplaced grace note on his sheet music. 

It’s easy— too easy— to fall into rhythm with him. They write together, which turns into studying together, which turns into hanging out together (lunch in between classes, brunch on the weekend, a movie on his laptop when they’re stuck writing a certain section), and it’s all so deliriously wonderful that Nini sometimes forgets he’s only doing this out of obligation to a classmate. At most, he’s doing it out of friendship. Is that what they are now? Friends? Maybe. And Nini will take it; she’ll take any part of him that she can get, because for all her talk of moving on and getting over him, he’s her soulmate, her ending and her beginning, her _person_ who is hers and only hers until the world ceases to exist. Her heart knows him more intimately than anyone else.

It’s inevitable that they’d share tidbits of information with each other, too; after all, they’d shared everything for nearly seven years of their lives. He’s late for a writing session one time, and that’s the day Nini learns that he has a job at a record store in East Village. Another time, he brings her a strawberry donut without prompting, muttering something about stopping by the dining hall on his way. But the dining hall doesn’t have strawberry donuts, and the last time she mentioned anything about strawberry donuts was when they were eight years old and she made him promise to get her a tiny strawberry donut to put on her finger instead of a ring. In all these slow and tentative ways, she’s beginning to build up her knowledge of Ricky Bowen the college freshman, filling in the gaps and building on top of her knowledge of Ricky Bowen the kindergartner, the first grader, the second grader… The worst part is that all of it only serves to push her harder into the fall— off the precipice of _I think I could love him_ and headfirst into _I think I’m in love with him_. 

Thankfully, Thanksgiving break gives her a breather from him. Nini stays on campus for the short break along with most of the other international students; it’s a welcome reprieve from the tumult of her first few months of college. She takes a few days to wander around the city, finding her new favorite spot for chai lattes, investigating the quickest way to get from Juilliard to Chinatown, reveling in the quiet grandeur of Central Park, and remembering that she is more than just the sum of herself and her soulmate. She’s more than that, and she knows it, but it’d be nice to have her soulmate, nonetheless.

Her thoughts toward Ricky Bowen stay soft and wistful, tinged with fragile hope, until she’s on her way back to her room the day before classes are supposed to begin again, and she sees Ricky and Cassie standing outside Cassie’s door. It’s a brutal reminder of what exactly her place in his life is— she’s just a classmate, maybe a friend. _Soulmate_ doesn’t even factor into the equation. She hurries past them, keeping her head down and trying to make as little noise as possible because it sounds like they’re murmuring something to each other. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ricky lean down, probably to kiss Cassie, and she squeezes her eyes shut and makes it the rest of the way down the hallway to her room like that, eyes shut and heart crumbling into ashes. She doesn’t see how Ricky only leans down to place a whisper-soft, bittersweet kiss on Cassie’s forehead. She doesn’t hear how the murmurings between them are overlaid with melancholic gratitude. She just knows that this hurts more than it ever did before, because maybe Ricky Bowen was just a faint possibility in the past, but now that she’s spent weeks getting to know him and the way he holds his pencil, he’s solid and so real and almost within her grasp, and yet… he’s not hers.

When classes begin again, Nini tries to withdraw herself from Ricky’s orbit, tries to wean herself off of his boyish smiles and his ridiculously sparkly eyes. It’s futile, predictably so, but she tries her hardest, anyways. There are only three weeks until winter break, and then she’ll be back in the sunshine and humidity of the Philippines. New York City has been gray and drizzly, accompanied by the kind of cold that sets into your bones and numbs you from the inside out. Maybe she would’ve kept her head warm and dry if Ricky had given her blue skies and sunshine like he used to whenever it rained wherever she was, but that hasn’t been a possibility for many years now. 

Ricky notices, because of course he does; Nini can’t catch a damn break. In starts and spurts, stumbling over his words, he asks her if she’s okay, if he’s done something to upset her, and why isn’t she responding to his texts about lunch or watching the latest shitty Netflix romcom? His murmuring of _I want to help you if there’s anything wrong, Nini_ is so soft and sincere that it brings goosebumps to her skin. She brushes him off awkwardly, citing schoolwork and promises to hang out with other friends, all the while thinking about how unfair it is that the universe is dangling this sweet boy in front of her face, tempting her with what she can’t have. She thought she’d be okay with being friends. She thought she’d be grateful for any part of him that she could get, and she _is_ , but it’s not enough; it’s never enough. Slowly, she’s coming to the realization that it may never _ever_ be enough. Slowly, she’s coming to the realization that it hurts more to skim so close to the surface of someone like Ricky Bowen, because every move closer just reminds her how far there is to go before she can be as close as she wants. That distance is insurmountable, indomitable, practically infinite. And she can only be invincible for so long before she has to admit defeat and retreat from the fight. Maybe if she was stronger, less selfish, more daring… but she’s just who she is, nothing more and nothing less. And there’s only so much that her heart can take. 

They finish their project at 2am on a Thursday-seeping-into-Friday, when his curls are sticking out in every which way and her cheek is smeared with pencil from marking her sheet music. 

“Hey.” He nudges her shoulder; she’d fallen asleep against him on the piano bench. 

“Hmm?” She stirs awake and blinks lovelorn eyes at him. 

“We’re done, Neens.” _Neens_. The nickname is familiar from when they were kids, but he hadn’t said it since.

“Oh,” she breathes out, still a little confused from her brief nap. “Really?”

He smiles fondly at her. “Yeah, really.”

“Well, that’s great, and awesome, and, uh, very good and all…” Her voice fades away into a silent question; he looks like he’s leaning closer, like he’s about to kiss her. He’s in her space now, closer than he’s ever been. One hand goes up to cup her cheek, and she leans into the touch, hopelessly entranced. His thumb strokes the apple of her cheek slowly, almost pensively, rubbing away the pencil marks there. If Nini were capable of intelligent thought right now, she’d wonder what he’s thinking about, but she’s too busy wondering if any of this is real, too busy drowning in the gentle sweep of his fingers across her face.

“I’m going to kiss you now, if that’s okay,” he whispers, hoarse and breathy.

“I think I’ll die if you don’t kiss me,” she returns, honest and brave for the first time in a long time. 

“Well, we certainly can’t have that. Guess I’m just going to have to do it.” And then his lips are on hers, and she sparks to life. Girl, on fire. The universe simply _sighs_ : yes, this is what was meant to be. 

Kissing Ricky, being kissed by Ricky… it’s an art. It’s a symphony. It must be, because how else could something feel so grand and significant? How else could something feel so achingly reverent, so timelessly monumental, so impossibly tender? Nini’s heart simultaneously breaks and mends itself back together with each press of his lips, a constant cycle of _my god this can’t be real_ and _I don’t care if it isn’t_. 

Maybe at some point in human history, it had been possible that they needed oxygen to live. It’s certainly hard to conceive that this could be true when Ricky’s mouth is attached to hers, but she’s rudely reminded of the need to breathe when he pulls away from her. Ah, yes, _air_. He exhales shakily against her neck, and his lips are trembling when he begins placing soft, glancing kisses there. Or maybe she’s the one trembling, like she’s standing atop a seismic shift— earthquake Ricky, rocketing off the Richter scale. In any case, it’s hard to tell who’s shaking more violently, absolutely undone by the divine, simple truth of the matter: this is their soulmate, their ending and their beginning, their _person_ who is theirs and only theirs until the world ceases to exist. It’s easy now to understand why people would fight wars and cross oceans and build monuments, all for love, when it feels like _this_.

Reality hits Nini like a car crash when her elbow bangs into the cover of the piano. She shoves Ricky away with a gasp, tears instantly springing to her eyes as she realizes what a colossal, horrible mistake she’s made. “Oh my god, no no no, this can’t be happening,” she repeats frantically to herself, bringing a hand up to her lips in disbelief. She can still feel the imprint of his mouth there, can still feel the swell of her lips in response to the pressure of his; it’s real.

He smiles bemusedly at her. “Neens? What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong? What’s _wrong_? You just— you just kissed me! What about Cassie, what about not wanting a soulmate, what about— what about not wanting _me_?” Her voice is hysterical as she gathers up her things in her bag. “Don’t do this, Ricky. Don’t. Don’t get close to me. Please, god, just leave me alone. Let me learn to be happy without you. I can’t let myself hope for anything with you, I really can’t. I just— I have to go.”

She’s out of the room in less time than it takes to break her own heart, and then she doesn’t even glance his way the next day when their piece is being performed by a student ensemble in class. The piece itself is gorgeous, and they both know it. They’re going to ace this class, and Nini’s going to miss working with him for the rest of her life, because she’s already decided that this is the end of it. She wants Ricky so much that it hurts, but she can feel herself splintering into smaller and more jagged pieces from the sharp, twisted hope that maybe one day, he’ll want her, too. And it just isn’t sustainable, so this is the end of it.

With their final project done, there’s no reason for them to see each other anymore. She tells Big Red what happened and asks him to try and keep Ricky away from her as much as possible. Every time Nini sees Ricky out of the corner of her eye, she hurries away before he spots her. Finals keep them both busy, and then she’s on a plane back to the Philippines, ready to see her family and her old friends.

The holidays pass in a blink of an eye, and then it’s the new year and Nini’s supposed to be on a flight to New York City in a few short days. The weeks of rest have been kind to Nini; in the presence of people who have loved her since she was a little girl with pigtails and gaps in her front teeth, she remembers that she is blessed with so much else in life.

A knock at her front door one morning brings her world spinning to a halt. It’s Ricky Bowen, standing on her front step at half past ten on a Sunday morning, with his backpack, his passport, and the clothes on his back.

“I made a New Year’s resolution this year,” he blurts out. “And, y’know, I don’t usually put much stock into those, because who really follows their resolutions anyway, right? But I talked to Red, and he told me where your head was at, and I just— you didn’t know?”

His words would barely make sense to someone who has all their wits about them; Nini’s only half sure her brain is working at all right now, and she’s still processing the sight of Ricky at her childhood home. She says the only thing she can: “What the hell are you talking about?”

Ricky takes a deep breath. “Cassie and I broke up over Thanksgiving break. We realized we were just using each other as a crutch, instead of processing our own traumas. I’m not— you’re not— we weren’t doing anything wrong, that day in the practice room. I wanted to kiss you. I think you wanted to kiss me, too.”

“I mean, duh.” Nini wishes her brain-to-mouth filter would turn back on. 

He smiles goofily at her. “Good. Me, too. I mean, I already said that, but yeah.”

She’s at a complete loss for words, other than a hesitant, “Okay?”

“Oh! Oh yeah, my resolution. Uh, I made a resolution that I was going to stop being scared of you. Well, not you specifically, more like my soulmate. So actually yeah, you.” He’s still grinning, as if he was making any sense at all.

“Ricky, I have no idea what you’re saying right now,” Nini says finally. “How did you get here? Why are you here? What are you trying to tell me?”

His grin drops, bemused at her bemusement. “Uh, I flew here. On a plane. Don’t worry about the cost, though! My mom usually sends me a lot of money around the holidays every year. Probably because she feels bad about abandoning me after the divorce but, y’know, free money is free money.” He laughs awkwardly. “What were the other questions? Oh, right, why I’m here. I’m here to ask if you’d be willing to give me a chance, I guess. I want to try this soulmate thing, Nini. And I know I’ve been absolutely horrible to you about it, so I’ll understand if you want to just punch me in the face and tell me to get lost, but honestly, I felt like I might die if I didn’t come to you and tell you that I want to be with you for the rest of my life. Does that feel rushed? Sorry if it does, I dunno. I just… I haven’t been the same since we kissed. I haven’t been the same since the day I met you, actually. Well, if we’re really being honest, I probably haven’t been the same since the seventh grade, when I just cut you off like that. Or, since kindergarten, since we got our soul marks. That’s probably more accurate, right?”

Nini blinks rapidly at him. His explanation is as erratic as her heartbeat; she can hardly comprehend what he’s saying. Finally, she asks the one question that has been on her mind since she was 12 years old and the sky above her head disappeared. “Why’d you do it? Why’d you leave me all those years ago?”

He sighs, his shoulders dropping and his countenance sobering. “I gave you my shitty explanation that night in the bathroom, didn’t I? It was because of the divorce. And I probably shouldn’t have done it; I shouldn’t have assumed you and I would end up like my mom and dad, but I was thirteen and angry and confused, and I didn’t know any better. And then… things got worse. Mom stopped talking to us. Dad started drinking. I went off the rails for a little bit, too, until my music teacher shook some sense into me and told me I’d never get into Juilliard if I kept acting like there would never be any consequences for my actions.”

He smiles sadly. “And then I saw you at Juilliard, at 12:03 on a Sunday. And I couldn’t believe that the girl I’d been running away from for so long was standing right in front of me, real and close enough to touch.” He laughs, self-deprecating and a little watery. “You scare the shit out of me, Nini. You know who you are? You’re the person who put stars in the sky for me when I was a little kid. You’re my _soulmate_. I couldn’t let myself fuck that up. I mean, I ended up fucking it up anyway, but I really thought I was doing something there, that night in the bathroom. I really thought I was protecting you from what happened to my parents. Because, you see, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I ever hurt you like that. I’d just wither away and fade into nothingness. At least, that’s what I thought I would do. But then I really did hurt you, and I’m still here, perfectly fine, so what does that say about me, huh? I don’t know. Nothing good, probably. But Red said I can’t keep running away from fear, and I can’t keep running away from happiness or love. So, I’m here. I stopped running. And now, I guess I’m just wondering if you still want me.”

Nini clenches her fists and shoves him in the chest, hard. He stumbles back from the force of her fists, startled and scared. “You had no right,” she seethes. “You had no right to decide what was good for me, or what was going to keep me safe. You had no right to ask me to just leave you alone so that you could be happy with someone else. No fucking right.” She heaves a breath. “I should hate you. I want to hate you. And I don’t know what it is— the soulmate bond? Stupidity? Naiveté? But I still want you. So, so much. Because as much as you hurt me, as much as you broke my heart, you put it back together again, too. Writing music with you feels like what I was born to do. Every note you put down on paper mended my heart back together a little bit. I just… I can’t stop wanting you, Ricky. I won’t stop wanting you, ever.”

They're both crying when she hugs him, bringing him into the safe haven of her arms. A boat coming back to harbor, a wave crashing onto the shore, a lightbulb twisted into place and switched back on, a soft landing for a hard journey; there aren’t enough ways to describe how right this feels, how good it feels. It’s ancient and everlasting: this is their soulmate, their ending and their beginning, their _person_ who is theirs and only theirs until the world ceases to exist. 

She sniffles into his shoulder, “You know, you could’ve just written something in the sky for me, instead of flying out all the way here. I would’ve known what you meant.”

He pulls back and laughs briefly. “Oh man, I haven’t done that in so long.” His smiles turn sad at the memory of all those lost years— so much wasted time, slipped through his fingers by his own hand. 

“It’s okay, Ricky,” she whispers. “I mean, it’s not okay, but it’s what happened. I forgive you for it.”

“You shouldn’t,” he mutters.

“Yeah? Well, that’s just too bad. The forgiveness is mine to give, and I say I forgive you.” She places her fingers on the corners of his mouth and pushes them upward, coaxing his smile back into happy territory again. “Now, can you try to put something in the sky for me, please?”

He closes his eyes and furrows his eyebrows, his entire face screwed up in concentration. It’s like exercising a muscle that has atrophied away from disuse, but he’s still got it. Blue skies and sunshine appear over Nini’s head, along with clouds that dot the sky in the formation of _Hi, it’s Ricky!_ Tears spring anew to her eyes at the familiar, beloved celestial features. Immediately, she conjures up velvety darkness and sparkling stars for him, arranged in the formation of _It’s good to have you back_.

It isn’t _easy_ after that. Nothing ever is. Ricky and Nini spend a few days blissed out on the beaches, eating sorbetes, soaking up sunshine, and splashing around in the ocean. Suntanned— or, in Ricky’s case, sunburnt— and filled with featherlight happiness, they board a plane to New York City together and arrive as a pair: soulmates, reunited.

They take things slow. Though they may have spent seven years knowing every detail of each other’s lives, they have spent almost five years as strangers, unmoored and disparate. They learn and relearn each other, from the ground up. But this time, the foundation they build is strong, and it will stand the test of time.

Eventually, Nini asks him what changed for him— what made him decide to want her? He laughs at her question and taps her nose fondly. He explains that there was never a turning point at which he decided that he wanted her; he’d always wanted her, since kindergarten, and even after seventh grade. He just didn’t think he deserved her. He thought that he’d only ever hurt her, the way his parents hurt each other. And he’s not stupid or irrational; he’s seen plenty of soulmate pairings work out. But he thought that if there was even the slightest chance that he could hurt her, he didn’t want to risk it. And then, he met her. And everything he had promised to himself about giving her up and not letting her get hurt flew out the window. His world turned upside down, and she was the only part that stayed upright. 

She taps him on the nose right back and swats him on the shoulder, admonishing him again for thinking that he could make all these decisions for her. Easily, he admits that he was wrong to do so, and that he wasn’t all that successful, anyways. He still wanted her, even when he thought he couldn’t have her.

“Maybe you _will_ hurt me,” Nini says simply. “In fact, you already did.” They’ve gone over the past and aired out their regrets enough now that it doesn’t make them grimace anymore. “That’s just part of life, right? There’s pain and there’s love, but as long as the love outweighs the pain, I’ll take it all. I’m sure I’ll hurt you, too. We’re not perfect, Ricky. But I don’t want perfect. I don’t want painless. I just want you.” She threads her fingers with his and presses a kiss to the back of their joined hands. “I’ll only ever want you.” 

Ricky goes to therapy for his trauma over his parents, and Nini’s always there to pick him up at the end of his sessions. She goes all the way across the city once a week just to make sure that she’s holding a hot chocolate for him when he gets out. The first time she does it, his knees nearly buckle, overwhelmed by the weight of his gratitude for her, for all the chances she’s given him. The next time she does it, he asks if she can get whipped cream on top, and she just grins and steals a sip from his drink. Every time after that, she brings him hot chocolate with whipped cream, and he gets it on his nose just to see her laugh and swipe it away with her thumb.

It’s awkward, the first time they run into Cassie as a couple, but it was bound to happen, seeing as she lives in the same hallway as Nini. Ricky and Cassie had stayed friends throughout everything, and Nini would never begrudge him that— she understands that Cassie will always be an important piece of his life and who he is. On her part, Nini just feels immensely guilty about the way she’d made barbed comments about Cassie in her head back when the other girl had been with Ricky, but Nini thinks she sees understanding in Cassie’s eyes when the girl tells them that she’s happy for them. As Ricky enthusiastically tells Cassie about the new piece he’s working on, Nini and Cassie share a look of understanding; both of them know what it’s like to love Ricky Bowen, and both of them have learned from it. Cassie shyly announces that last week, she met someone after her own therapy session who had never gotten a soul mark, and she’s planning to get coffee with them next week. Nini finds genuine joy in herself for the girl, and she hesitantly remarks that she’d like to hear about the date afterward, if Cassie wanted to talk about it. Cassie agrees heartily, and Nini leaves Ricky and Cassie to catch up with a new lightness in her step. 

They take things slow, so in a span of three months since coming back to the city, they still haven’t really kissed. The affection between them is so easy it’s almost an afterthought— hands intertwined on the way to class, knees bumping together underneath a table, sweet kisses pressed to cheeks and foreheads and the backs of hands, an arm wound across a waist or across shoulders— but they haven’t kissed on the lips yet. Nini feels extremely childish explaining that fact to Kourtney, who just suggests that perhaps Ricky is waiting for her to make the first move.

Nini feels like she exhausted all her patience during those months of pining after Ricky, so she doesn’t have much left to deal with waiting for him to kiss her. She takes matters into her own hands one night when they’re hanging out in her room, doing homework. 

“You mind if I stay the night?” he asks absentmindedly, twirling his pencil as he goes through a particularly troubling counterpoint section.

She gives him a baleful look. “You know I don’t mind, but really, you might as well stop paying for your dorm. You’re here all the time, anyway.”

He grins impishly at her. “Yeah, I don’t know how I’d explain that to the school. Sorry, can I just live with my girlfriend instead?” 

“At least start bringing your own toothpaste when you stay the night. I’m running out so quickly, you freeloader,” she gripes, but she’s smiling all the same. She’s still smiling when they head to the bathroom together later, brushing their teeth side by side. 

Standing there, in the unassuming bathroom that had been the site of one of the most momentous conversations in their lives, Nini is seized with a desperate urge to kiss him. Maybe it’s because he just looks so kissable; even in the unflattering fluorescent lights of the bathroom, he looks unbearably soft, wearing an oversized t-shirt and plaid pajama pants, his hair mussed from too much tugging while doing his homework. 

“Ready to go, Neens?” His hand is already on the door handle, preparing to exit. It reminds her of how they’d stood in these exact spots months ago, on the brink of heartbreak. But now, he looks back towards her with a fond look on his face, and she wants to kiss him. 

“Not quite,” she murmurs, reaching out to tug him close by his t-shirt. 

“What’s up?” He quirks his mouth at her, inquisitive and all too willing to do whatever she wants.

“I know we’re taking things slow and all,” she begins, rising up on her tiptoes to cup his face in her hands. “But I really, really want to kiss you again. So, I’m going to kiss you now, if that’s okay.”

“I think I’ll die if you don’t kiss me,” he quips, an echo of what she’d said in that practice room when they first kissed.

“You’re hilarious,” she mutters dryly, and then she’s kissing him. Fireworks explode above both of their heads, and yeah, it’s just as magical and intoxicating as the first time. Maybe she’s just been treading water for the past eighteen years, aimlessly keeping herself afloat only to end up here, in a college bathroom at half past midnight on a Sunday, her hands in Ricky Bowen’s hair and her heart in her throat. His fingers trembling against her back. His mouth against hers. His eyelashes fluttering against her skin in rapid attempts not to open his eyes to check if she’s real. 

She reminds him with each kiss that yes, it’s real, she’s here, and she’s his. His kisses respond with _thank god it’s you, thank god you’re here, thank god you’re mine_. 

As the rest of their freshman year goes on, they say their _I love you_ s to each other, they attend NYC Pride together (she draws a rainbow in the sky for him with the colors of the bisexual pride flag, and he draws her a rainbow with the colors of the pansexual pride flag, and everyone teases them for it but takes pictures anyways), they write more music together (some time in the distant future, they sweep the awards season for the film score of Big Red’s directorial debut), they explore the city together (finding the best bubble tea shop is a very serious endeavor), and most of all, they grow, and they learn, and they love. Together.

And every day, they put the stars, the sun, the moon, the clouds, and all other celestial features into the sky for each other, basking in this divine, comforting truth: they love— and they are loved by— their soulmate. Their ending and their beginning. Their _person_ who is theirs and only theirs until the world ceases to exist. 

**Author's Note:**

> yup yup hope u liked that (i feel like i lost steam towards the end but it eez what it eez) pls leave me ur thoughts below!! last week was such a shitty week for me in terms of academic workload (and this week doesn't look much better) so if u would like to leave some kindness for me that would be so nice :))
> 
> also!! i've been ridiculously busy lately so i haven't been able to read and comment on a lot of things, but if you're looking for things to read, i'd recommend anything by ebi_pers, lovealwayskatie, thefallingdead, fayevian, and burnthiscityxx. those are just off the top of my head, but i also saw fics by lottielotsof and ataharcot that look really good!
> 
> (also i'm on twitter @staccatohearts if u want to follow me there for absolutely nothing of value)


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